yorku.grassland.Sept20-2016.csv

<b>Prediction</b>It was expected the amount of grass coverage in percent is greater than the percentage of plant or vegetation coverage within the grassland environment. <b>Hypothesis</b> The proportion of grass coverage is greater than the percentage of plant coverage in a given grassland environment because the grass takes up more nutrients from the soil, allowing less plants to grow. <br> <b>Meta-data</b> The observational study was done in a grassland setting at the location of Boyer Woodlot with a latitude of 43.8^o and a longitude of -79.5^o. This experiment was conducted from 2:50 p.m.- 4:40 p.m. on September 20th 2016. The temperature was 25ᴼC with the weather forecast being mostly sunny. A quadrat was one of the equipment that was used to sample the plant population in the grassland environment. Next the length and width of the quadrat was measured with a measuring tape to calculate the total area of the quadrat, which was 1m². The quadrat was divided into 100 square grids and each square grid had the dimensions 10 centimetres by 10 centimetres. The quadrat was initially placed at the edge of the grassland area northwest of the Lumbers building. Overlapping plants and grass were not taken into account. The total amount of plants was then calculated by counting the plants within the 100 square grids. All the different species of plants were also counted and included in the total number of plants. All the plants grown from the root within the interior of the quadrat were counted where each stem was counted as one individual plant. After the number of different plant species were counted by visually observing the amount of different plant species found in the quadrat. The different plant species were classified as a different species based on the size, shape, and colour of the plant. The coverage of plants and grass were measured as a percentage. Each square grid within the quadrat is equal to 1% of coverage, and the coverage of the plant was calculated by seeing how much of the 100 square grids were covered with plants. Next the coverage of grass was calculated by looking at the amount of grids that contained grass. In total the coverage of plants and the coverage of grass together added up to 100% coverage.The study was repeated for a total of 25 times (n=25). Random sampling was determined by placing the quadrat apparatus 1m apart from where the last quadrat observation was conducted in order to obtain accuracy in the results. The 1^st researcher collected the data for the total vegetation and grass population in percent. While the 2^nd researcher collected the data for the number of different species in the experiment.